Tech Post - Cello Recording

Wow, it's been a long time since i've done a tech post. Its tough getting motivated to do tech posts when all you ever do is work. I've been trying to cut back from completely insane hours to only moderately insane hours, I feel much better lately. Right now i'm on a plane at 34,000 feet listening to The Sundays on my ipod with the headphones crammed deep into my ears. The world is so much nicer when i cannot hear anything but music. Anyway, today i'll blog a bit about how i typically record a single cello. Recently i produced New York City indie rockers "Skidmore Fountain". Their song "Break" can be heard on my main page under the LISTEN section and is definitely worth a listen. Break has electric cello mostly, except for the bridge section which is about 6 tracks of acoustic cello all mic'd the way i'm about to document.

Alot of engineers record cello at a distance, usually 4 to 6 feet. I really don't like to do that unless theres a very specific reason to. I like mic'ing cello up close, usually around 14 to 20 inches away placing the mic higher than the bridge kind of pointing between the strings and the F hole. For a slightly brighter more aggressive sound, get even closer to the strings, for a slightly warmer less rosin like sound, back the mic off to 24 to 36 inches away. In modern rock and pop productions (on this album, indie rock usually with full drum kit, guitars, vocals, odd sounds, often bass, etc...) its alot for the cello to compete with sonically so i cant think of "How can i get the ultimate cello sound", i've got to think more about what kind of cello sound can i get that will sound best within this context. Hence, i get the mic fairly close, 14 to 20 inches. My signal chain for this particular recording was a Sony C800G Tube condensor mic into a GML 2032 mic pre with 4 band EQ, then touch it a bit with an Avalon 737 compressor then into Apogee Rosetta 800 convertors directly into Logic (Digi HD system). I did use some EQ on the GML, i think a bit of top end to open it up even a bit more, probably something like +3 dB wide bell @ 7K, and i'm pretty sure i added a touch of bottom as well, a very slight amount around 100Hz, and the cello had a resonant frequency that was kind of bothering me, so i notched a tight frequency out in the lower mids around 400Hz.

The clearest example of this recording can be found on Skidmore Fountain's myspace page www.myspace.com/skidmorefountain Listen to a song called "Lost n Lonely" which has alot of single cello strewn thru the song, all recorded in this way. Also, if you remember the Skidmore Fountain tech blog on recording electric guitar by mic'ing the guitar body during recording, the guitar on this song was recorded like that, so you might want to go back and read that blog before you listen if you care :-)

I've also included two pictures from this recording session to give you a visual idea of where i put the mic.




- Ken Lewis